WinInsider

With a $613 million fine about to be leveled by the European Union against Microsoft, the software company has given up trying to influence the EU's commissioners and, instead, has approached several antitrust authorities in individual nations in a last-ditch attempt to settle the case.

While Competition Commissioner Mario Monti has been upping the ante against Microsoft in recent weeks, the case will begin to move out of his hands on Wednesday.

Microsoft's MSN division will launch a radically redesigned search engine in July, creating a new front on the company's offensive against Internet search giant Google. Microsoft began testing its new inhouse algorithmic search engine after its MSNBot Web-crawling robots began indexing Web content last summer. In fall 2003, the company opened the MSN Search Beta to testers, offering them an early look at the new UI.

It is likely Microsoft will file a protective order to stop Oracle Corp. from viewing sensitive information, according to a Microsoft executive.

Last week Microsoft, along with software developers SAP AG, Lawson Software Inc. and QAD Inc., appealed to the U.S. District Court of California to restrict Oracle's in-house attorneys from having access to their sensitive documents, for fear that competitive information would be leaked internally. The U.S. Department of Defense and Fidelity Employer Services made similar requests.

Overhauling its online services for small businesses, Microsoft on Tuesday said it will replace bCentral with a new Microsoft Small Business Center Web site. The Microsoft Small Business Center will offer all the information and services found on bCentral, but add detailed information on Microsoft products for small businesses such as Office Small Business Edition and Windows Small Business Server, Microsoft said in a statement.

Some executives might mince words when the legal fate of their company in a publicized antitrust trial is hanging in the balance. But not Doug Burgum, the senior vice president in charge of the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) unit of Microsoft.

At the annual MBS customer conference here on Monday, Burgum gave press and analysts an earful regarding his views of the EU antitrust case against Microsoft in which a decision is expected on Wednesday.

A quiet casualty of the latest Yukon/Whidbey slippage is the Microsoft Business Framework. The framework, or MBF, which ostensibly builds upon the broader .Net framework, is to be the foundation of new business applications from both Microsoft and its ISV partners. Early pieces of it have shown up in the Microsoft Business Portal. But "early bits" that were to be made available to ISVs by late last year never emerged.

For the first time since Web browser pioneer Netscape Communications Corp. hit the market in the mid-1990s, Microsoft's stranglehold on computer desktops is being threatened. Microsoft faces two rivals , Google, the world's most popular Web surfing vehicle, and Yahoo, the Internet's most popular destination.

Its dominance may seem unassailable, given that its Windows operating system controls all but a small fraction of the world's personal computers. But as the Internet consumes an increasing amount of people's computer time, the plumbing provided by Microsoft is becoming less important than the online agenda that increasingly is being set by trailblazing Web companies like Yahoo and Google.

European Union states on Monday backed a proposal to fine Microsoft a record 497 million euros ($613.5 million) for abusing its dominance of PC operating systems, an EU member state source said.

Microsoft associate general counsel for Europe Horacio Gutierrez said in a statement the fine was unjustified.

"We believe it's unprecedented and inappropriate for the Commission to impose a fine on a company's U.S. operations when those operations are already regulated by the U.S. government and the conduct at issue has been permitted by both the Department of Justice and the U.S. courts," he said.

Microsoft announced a herd of updates to its business applications and services Monday, marking the beginning of its Convergence 2004 conference for business customers. The updates include new functions for the Microsoft Business Network, a subscription-based software hosting service Microsoft released last year to help companies exchange shipping lists, inventory updates and other data.

Microsoft is expected this week to pay as much as $40 million over two years to video stream live Major League Baseball games onto PCs, sources said on Monday, heightening competition with rival RealNetworks and signaling rising costs for online video programming.

The deal is one of the most expensive online sports programming deals to date. Microsoft will receive exclusive rights to stream live video of most baseball games this season onto PCs, the sources said. MSN offers these streams as part of MSN Premium, a $9.95-a-month software package that offers Net services and content. One source said Microsoft may also sell subscriptions through its MSN.com Web portal. Users will also be able to listen to live games through the service.